


Felicity Versus the Mystery

by McFreeky



Series: Chuckin' Arrows [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 06:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1500158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFreeky/pseuds/McFreeky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just another boring day working at a crappy retail store for Felicity Smoak. That is until someone comes in that flips her life upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all started with a laptop and an obvious lie.

“So. Whaddya think? It’s perfect, right?”

Felicity sighed, not looking up from her work. “Daily, I’m not starting a band with you.”

“C’mon! It’s such a good idea. We could be famous!”

“We don’t play any instruments.”

“We can learn.”

She finally looked up from her computer and eyed Daily. She was leaning on the Tech-perts’ counter, giving Felicity her best pair of puppy dog eyes.

“No, no, no, no. Don’t give me that look.”

It only intensified. Felicity felt her resolve waning like it always did when Daily pleaded with her like this.

“There should be a better reason to start a band than, ‘We can totally call ourselves The Ly’s.’”

Daily continued the assault on her willpower. Just as she was about to crack, Colton swooped in to save the day followed closely by his shadow Rex. Felicity knew she would never admit it to anyone ever, but she was glad to see them just this once.

“What is this I hear about you two starting a band?” Colton asked.

“Go away, Colton. This doesn’t concern you,” Daily told him.

His hands came together and began tapping his lips as he spoke. “Oh, I believe it does.” He pointed at them. “You see, you can’t start a band. There can only be one band in Tech World. Rexton already fills that slot.”

It took all of thirty seconds for Felicity's feelings to turn into contempt. Colton was grating on his best days; that smug look he was giving them dialed it up to 10. And Felicity knew if she was getting this irritated with him, Daily must be this close to boiling.

“There’s no rule saying there can only be one band,” Daily spat hotly. “You’re making stuff up.”

“Oh, I assure you there is, my magnetic munchkin. It is merely unwritten.”

Daily jabbed a finger into his chest hard, making Colton wince and flinch away. “Don't call me 'munchkin.' You really should walk away before I do something you'll regret.”

The store manager Tom walked up, preventing the discussion from going any further. “What the hell is this little pow wow? I pay you to work, not to chitchat. Colton, Rex, there are computers in the back waiting to be fixed. Fix them. Smoak, you’re fine here. And Rodriguez…”

Daily put on her best customer face that she could manage and watched him expectantly.

He sighed heavily. “Just try not to drive away any more customers.”

“I don’t drive away customers! I got actually got a sale earlier.”

“Yea? What was it?” Tom questioned.

Her bravado drained a bit. “Umm… batteries.”

He wasn’t impressed. “Wonderful. Just get back on the sale floor.”

To be fair, Daily didn’t drive away customers. Actually, she was very helpful. She just helped them find cheaper prices for products in other stores. The people loved her for it and had nothing but good things to say about her. But, to management, it was costing them money. They didn’t like that.

The group dispersed, leaving Daily and Felicity alone again. Once she saw that her friend had cooled off considerably, Felicity tempted fate.

“You should be careful about your sale numbers,” Felicity warned. “They could fire you if you don’t get them up.”

“Bah. They can’t fire me. Tom even told me as much. Said I was keeping the diversity quotient up. Hooray for being Mexican.”

There was no levity in her voice though. Her ethnicity was always a sore spot for her. She loved being Hispanic, but she hated how it was what everyone focused on at times.

Before Felicity could console her, Daily was nudging her over the desk.

“Hey, hey. Look.”

The excitement in her voice surprised her, though it shouldn’t. Daily was never one to let her day be wrecked so easily.

Felicity looked to where she was pointing, and her breath caught. Standing at the entrance stood one of the most gorgeous men she ever laid her eyes upon. His short brown hair seemed to shine in the sun that was coming through the glass doors behind him. There was short stubble on his strong jawline that gave him such a comforting and relaxed look. And he obviously worked out… a lot. He looked like he came out of a flipping magazine.

Their eyes met, and he started walking toward her. She was vaguely aware of Daily telling her good luck before leaving.

Was she breathing? She needed to remember to breath.

“Hi,” he said.

It should be illegal to have such startling blue eyes.

“Um…”

Felicity realized she had been staring at him for a while now. She shook herself out of it.

“What can I do to you?” Her eyes widened at what she said. “For you! I meant ‘for you.’ I wouldn’t do anything to you. Unless you wanted me to. I’m not saying you’re into weird stuff like that. I’m not saying I’m into weird stuff like that. And I’m not saying it’s bad if either one of us is. Just that I wouldn’t do anything weird to you unless you asked me to.” She took a breath. “And I’m babbling. Which will stop in 3… 2… 1…”

The man she thoroughly embarrassed herself in front of just smiled at her. It smoothed over her humiliation a bit, but it did nothing for her rapidly beating heart.

“I’m having some trouble with my computer,” he told her as he laid the laptop on the counter.

Felicity was glad she had something else to focus on. As soon as she saw the computer, all the embarrassment disappeared, and it was replaced with curiosity. She looked at him with an inquisitive expression.

“I was at my coffee shop surfing the web, and I spilled my latte on it.”

One of her eyebrows shot up. “Really? ‘Cause these look like a bullet holes,” she said as she put her finger in one of the new openings through the screen.

“My coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood,” he tried lamely.

Felicity cocked her head. He really expected her to believe that? She may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. Actually, she wasn’t born at night. It was early morning. But, still, it wasn’t yesterday. She wasn’t so naïve to think this happened to such a beautiful machine from a latte in some bad neighborhood. No, he was hiding something, and she was going to find out what.

“If there is anything you can salvage from it, I would really appreciate it.”

She tossed a pad of paper on the desk. “Fill out this form, and I’ll see what I can get out of it.”

The man picked up the pen and started to write. “Is there any way I can get a rush order on this? I need the information on it as soon as possible.”

Felicity smiled at him as took the laptop and put an identifying sticker on it. “Don’t worry, Mr…” She looked at his name on the sheet. “Mr. Merlyn. I’ll personally handle this one. Hopefully I can get the data back to you tomorrow.”

He smiled brightly back. “Great. Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said before he turned to leave.

She was going to figure out what was going on one way or another. Mysteries bugged her, and this Oliver Merlyn was a mystery wrapped in a riddle packed with conundrums, a complex puzzle she was going to solve.

* * *

Oliver felt his phone vibrating. He pulled it out, looked to see who was calling, and answered it. “What is it, Diggle?”

“Where are you?”

“Just outside Tech World. I just turned in the computer. Hopefully they can get the information out of it that we need.”

“You turned it over to a civilian?!” John yelled. “What the hell are you thinking?!”

“I’m thinking we need that data and neither one of us know how to get it out of a damage computer. Don’t worry. The information is encrypted. Even if they tried, they wouldn’t be able to break through it.”

Diggle didn’t respond right away. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t just give it to our-”

“Because I don’t trust them,” Oliver interrupted. “If Sar-”

Her name was still hard for him to say. He still couldn’t believe she did what she did. Still, he was a spy. He was trained to hide his emotions better than this.

“If Sara betrayed the Agency, who knows how many other moles are in the company. I want to keep this in house. I trust you Digg. I don’t trust them.”

“Fine. But this is a big risk, Queen. If they do break the encryption, it’s going to get messy. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“It’ll be fine. The one who’s going to do it seemed capable, but not smart enough to get through to anything sensitive. And Diggle…”

“Yea?”

“Don’t call me Queen. He died five years ago on the island.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was reading a spy AU in another fandom, and it reminded me of the TV show Chuck. Then I thought, "You what would work well in the Chuck universe? Olicity." And here it is. Fans of the show should instantly recognize some of the characters even though I renamed them while others are my addition to replace others. I may continue this and make it a part of a series. Depends on how my muse is feeling and the response it gets.


	2. The Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity got more than she bargained for.

Felicity found the clock hanging over the door. It was late, much later than she realized. It wasn’t unusual for her to get so caught up in some tricky repair that she was left her working in the Tech-pital (what was it with Tech World and putting Tech in front of every word to form some grotesque hybrid that made no sense?) late into the night. Tom had long given up on trying to get her to leave and even gave her a key to the back door so she could lock up after she was done.

But tonight was a new record for her. Even the most difficult problems never took her much past midnight. Mr. Merlyn’s computer had Felicity still here at four o’clock in the morning.

The data extraction had been simple and took her barely thirty minutes to complete. While the laptop was in in bad shape (much worse than a simple latte could achieve, just as she expected), the hard drive was fairly intact. She only had to remove it from the burnt out computer and plug it into another to get to whatever files that were still recoverable.

There was a lot. The drive had over a terabyte of data still viable on it. It was so big that Felicity had to go into the store and pull an external hard drive just to fit it all. But now that was done, she could get to work on what she really wanted to do, seeing what this Oliver Merlyn was hiding with his lame excuse for the bullet-ridden computer.

Felicity attempted to open the files only to realize that the entire hard drive was encrypted. She thought it wouldn’t be too hard to get through though. She got through bank firewalls and encryption algorithms in her spare time. Not that she did anything illegal once she got there. She just liked the challenge that repairing computers didn’t really offer. And if she could get through such secured networks, some random guy’s encryption should be a piece of cake.

She was wrong. It was the most sophisticated system Felicity had ever seen. It was a masterful work of code that led her down false paths and loops. She could get lost trying to figure this one out. But she wasn’t about to back down. She wasn’t the valedictorian of MIT for nothing. Or she would have been, if…

Nope! She was not going to follow that dangerous rabbit trail back to that particular hole. Felicity needed to focus if she was going to crack this monster before Mr. Merlyn came back. She couldn’t afford being distracted by what happened in the past.

It was a few minutes after five when she finally got through. Felicity fist-pumped as she watched the encryption fall away and revealing what was being hidden. As she flipped through the files, however, she instantly regretted her curiosity.

Mr. Merlyn was not an ordinary man. His computer was full of weapon plans, exit strategies, and dossiers on various people. It had mission briefings and status updates on operatives in other countries. She even found a list of people that seemed very important to him since it had been accessed multiple times a day.

Before she allowed her curiosity get her in any more trouble, Felicity closed the hard drive files, unhooked it, and scrubbed her computer for traces of the data. She didn’t know what Mr. Merlyn was into or what his job was, but she did know one thing – she shouldn’t have seen what she just saw.

* * *

Oliver walked into Tech World and searched for the blond Tech-pert he gave his laptop to yesterday. He couldn’t find her, but he did notice a short young woman approaching him, her face bright with a smile.

“Hey, you’re back.”

He forced a polite smile. “Have we met?” he asked.

Oliver recognized her, of course. He wouldn’t be very good at his job if he didn’t. She was the one speaking with the blonde when he approached.

“No, no, but I know why you’re here. My name is Daily by the way. You left a computer, right? Felicity stayed here late working on it. She was pretty adamant about gettin’ it done before we opened today.”

“Felicity?”

She nodded. “Felicity Smoak. The one you gave your laptop to. She’d never told you her name, did she? Yeah, she can get like that sometimes.”

“Like what?”

“Forgetful. It usually happens when she gets all flustered, and you can always tell when that happens ‘cause she rambles on and on until she embarrasses herself.”

Oliver smiled as he remembered this Felicity’s babbling. It was the first time in a long time where he didn’t have to force an expression where it was appropriate.

“She told me if I wanted her to do anything to me, I would have to ask.”

Daily laughed. “Sounds like her.” She watched him, and her smile grew. “Glad you don’t seem put off by it.”

“It was refreshing to hear someone’s thoughts unfiltered,” Oliver answered honestly. In his world of lies and secrets, it was surprisingly comforting to listen to the woman’s stream of consciousness. It was probably the reason his smile had been so natural.

“Never heard it described like that. Well, anyways. Let’s get your computer back. If you’ll follow me.”

Daily led him back to the Tech-pert counter. “Scott, do you have the laptop Felicity was working on late last night?”

The young man behind the counter searched under the desk and produced an external hard drive.

“Mr. Merlyn?” Scott asked.

Oliver nodded.

“Let’s see here,” he said as he browsed over a piece of paper. “It appears that Felicity is the only one who touched your laptop. According to her notes, it was too far gone to save, but she was able to salvage most of the hard drive. She had to pull an external from the store, so you’ll have to… Oh.”

“What?” Daily asked as she leaned over the counter to get a look.

“She says take the hard drive out of her pay since she forgot to warn you about it before.”

“That’s not necessary,” Oliver told him. “I figured it would be the case. I was ready to pay for it.”

“Are you sure? It’s not every day you get offered a free external.”

“I’m sure. She did me a favor by getting it done so fast. I’m not about to take advantage of her any more than I already have. And do you guys track sales here? Because if you do, I want you to give the sale to Daily while you’re at it. She was very helpful.”

Scott looked at Daily who was wide-eyed. “Absolutely,” he answered. “I can ring you up right here.”

Oliver waited as Scott started the transaction. He was very aware of the woman staring at him.

“You single?” she asked suddenly.

The question surprised him, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. “What?”

“Are you single?” she tried again. “Because I know of a particular blonde that rambles that is too. And seeing as you weren’t freaked out by said ramblings, I bet you two would get along great.”

Oliver smiled politely back. “I’m only in town for a short time. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to start a relationship that would last a month at the most.”

“Who said anythin’ about a relationship? Maybe you could just share some nice dinners together and have breakfast in bed the next morning.”

“Daily!” Scott admonished.

“What? She hasn’t been on a date in five years. Five years! She could use something!”

“I don’t think Felicity would appreciate you trying to set up her up with some stranger.” He turned to Oliver. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

Daily didn’t answer, but she stared daggers at Scott. Apparently, he was used to it because it didn’t seem to bother him.

“That will be $137.79,” Scott told him.

Oliver paid in cash. He didn’t need to leave a paper trail.

He took the money and counted it. “By the way, where is Felicity? She was supposed to work today.”

“She called in sick,” Daily answered.

“Really? Must be bad.”

That caught Oliver’s attention. “Is it unusual for her to call in to work?”

Daily nodded. “She almost never misses. She must have gotten something bad from one of her take out places.”

Maybe he was being paranoid, but the employee he gave the heavily encrypted hard drive to suddenly calling in sick made him uneasy. Still, the algorithm was so sophisticated that it would take a team of the best hackers an uninterrupted week to penetrate it, so it should be uncompromised.

Scott handed him the bag.

“Thank you,” Oliver said as he took it. He looked inside and only saw the new hard drive. “Where is the original drive?”

“Oh, sorry. Most people don’t want the unfixable stuff back so we don’t typically return it. I can check her notes to see what she did with it.”

“Please.”

Scott flipped through the paper work and skimmed their contents. “Ah. I’m sorry, but it appears she tossed it.”

That was not ideal. “Tossed it? There was sensitive information on it.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Daily said. “It’s Tech World policy to electronically and physically clear all stored information before we toss stuff. Anythin’ you had on the original drive is long gone by now.”

Oliver looked to the Tech-pert for verification. Scott nodded. It wasn’t the perfect solution, but it would have to suffice.

“Okay. Thanks for the help. And thank Felicity for me when she comes back.”

Oliver left the store and made it back in his car. He pulled his laptop out of its bag and plugged in the hard drive. Oliver typed in the necessary codes and searched through the files. The majority of them were there, a miracle in itself after the intense gunfight it almost didn’t survive. Most importantly the list was still there.

He did one final check before he shut down his computer but stopped when he noticed the problem. The encryption noted every time someone got through it. The last date was his access only a minute before. It was the date before that worried him.

It read: _5:03 am_. On today’s date. There was only one person who could have done it.

He had a serious problem.

* * *

“Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

Felicity was pacing her small living room, freaking out over what she had done. She had every intention to scrub the worn hard drive and toss it like company policy. But something stopped her. What if whoever put holes in the laptop found out she decrypted it? What if it led them to Tech World? What if they took everyone hostage until they produced the drive? And if they didn’t have the drive, what if they shot everyone? Then everyone’s death would be her fault. She couldn’t stand that.

So she decided to save the hard drive. But she couldn’t just leave it at Tech World. It was too dangerous there and too likely to be stolen by Colton or Rex. No. She had to keep it safe. And the only safe place she knew was her apartment.

So she brought it home with her and instantly realized how bad of an idea that was. Today was just not her day for making smart decisions.

Felicity called into work when she couldn’t even get an hour of sleep after all the tossing and turning. And the rest of the day was no better. She was anxious, waiting for government agents to storm her place and drag her off to some dark hole where she would never see the sun again.

Felicity realized she needed to protect herself if they did come for her. Since there was absolutely no way for her to win if she tried fighting them off physically, she would have to use her brain. That’s when she got the idea to alter the encryption on the hard drive she still had. She couldn’t do anything about the one already out there in Mr. Merlyn’s possession, but at least she would feel better about having the one here.

The rest of the day was spent at her desktop in her room, working on her new project. Felicity was hunched over the computer running through lines and lines of code, altering it and adding where she saw fit. While she was there, might as well add in her personal touch.

It was dark out when she finally finished. She pushed away from her desktop and stretched. She disconnected the hard drive and stashed it in the loose floorboard in her closet that she was glad she never got around to fixing.

She moved to her even smaller kitchen to get some leftovers and moved toward the couch to settle in for the rest of the night in front of the TV. Felicity doubted she would last long. The exhaustion from spending thirty six hours awake, alert, and active was finally catching up to her.

Before she got to her favorite seat, however, she felt a breeze. She looked to the window and was surprised to see it opened. She didn’t remember doing-

“Ow!”

She felt a sharp sting on her shoulder. Felicity reached to search for what it was and found a small metal tube with feathers on one end and a needle on the other.

“Wha…”

The word died on her lips. She slumped to the ground as her legs gave out. The world around her got fuzzy. The last thing she felt was the soft vibrations of someone walking on her hardwood floors as she lost consciousness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a thing now. My muse wouldn't let me end with just the one story so I wrote more. There will be one more chapter in this arc, and then it will probably turn into a series with more mythos about this world I'm still building and more Olicity. BECAUSE OLICITY IS ALWAYS MY END GAME!


	3. The Answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver needed answers, and, whoever this blonde was, she was going to give them to him.

He took her to one of the Agency’s safe-houses in the warehouse district. Oliver had nowhere else to go for the interrogation. He couldn’t very well walk into his hotel with an unconscious woman over his shoulder, and he didn’t want to involve Diggle unless he knew he couldn’t handle this problem himself.

Oliver also really didn’t want to admit to his friend that there was a problem. He misjudged this Felicity Smoak, if that was her real name. He hadn’t been so wrong about a person since Sara. He couldn’t take another blow to his already devastated pride. So he was motivated to get as much information as he could from the blonde.

He put the unconscious woman in a chair and zip-tied her wrists and ankles to its legs. The wooden chair was a little flimsy for his liking, but it would keep her immobilized and wouldn’t give her enough leverage to free herself.

Once she was secured, Oliver searched the warehouse for anything to hide his identity. She might already know who he was, but it was best to assume she didn’t. All he could find, though, was a green hood attached to a leather jacket. Who would be ridiculous enough to wear this monstrosity, he didn’t know, but it hung low over his face and covered most of his features. He’ll make do with that and the pistol he found during his search.

He made it back to “Felicity” only to find she was still passed out. She didn’t seem to have the resistance to tranquilizers his organization required. He swiped some smelling salts under her nose, and she woke with a start.

“Where… Huh?” she said as she finally became aware of her surroundings. She tried to lift her hands only to discover them tied down. “What the?”

“What is your name?” Oliver asked her in a low, gruff voice.

She looked up and found him standing off in a darker corner to better conceal himself. “Huh? What’s going on? Where am I? Who are-”

“What is your name?!” he asked again, this time much more forcefully.

She jumped at the intensity. “Felicity!” she squeaked. “Felicity Megan Smoak.”

Oliver didn’t believe her, but it didn’t matter what she called herself. “Who do you work for?”

“What?”

“Who do you work for?!” he demanded.

Felicity flinched at the harshness. “Tech World,” she answered quickly. “I work at Tech World as a Tech-pert. I fix computers-”

“I don’t care about your cover! Who do you really work for?”

“Tech World!” she cried. He could see tears starting to stream down her cheeks.

Oliver pulled his gun and walked forward just enough for her to see it. “Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not! I swear!” she pleaded. “I work at Tech World in Starling City. My boss is Tom Malkaway. I work seven hours and forty five minutes a day for five days a week because the store is too cheap to give us full time benefits. I get paid a crappy fifteen dollars an hour and only earn that much because I’m the best one there and practically store manager. If I could find a job anywhere else, I would, but there isn’t a big demand for college dropouts.”

Felicity Smoak was either one of the best spies he had ever met, or she was what she said she was, an hourly worker at a retail store. Oliver was inclined to believe the latter. He doubted he could sneak up on such a great spy as easily as he had in her apartment. That only made more questions come to mind.

“How did you get through the encryption on the hard drive?”

Her eyes widened, and she fought to find his eyes under the hood. “So this is about the hard drive.” She sounded significantly less frightened even though the gun was still pointed at her forehead.

“Answer the question.”

Felicity audibly swallowed and glanced at the gun before searching for his eyes again.

“I went to MIT,” she explained. She was calmer now though he could still feel her nervous energy. “I majored in computer science and engineering. I was top of my class until someone decided to lie about me and got me expelled. To this day, I don’t know why she did it. I mean, I thought we were friends! We shared an apartment together. We went out together. We even got each other through break ups! I helped her get through three quarts of coffee ice cream after Dylan, and I don’t even like coffee ice cream. I mean I main-lined the stuff every morning because I went to one of the best engineering schools in the world and needed the energy, but it’s not my first choice when I want a frozen treat. But I did it for her because that’s what friends do. Sara Lance must have never got that memo.”

Oliver was just about to stop the seemingly endless babbling when Felicity mentioned Sara Lance. The name made his hands grip the pistol tight and made his chest constrict even tighter.

“You know Sara? How?” He felt himself losing his edge.

She must have picked up on the change. “Uh, from a GIR, um, a gen ed. class our freshman year. We formed a study group together and became friends.”

“What does she look like?”

“What?”

“What does she look like?” he asked more fervently. “Did she have blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and a dimple on her chin? Was she the same height as you?”

“Yeah,” Felicity answered. Her confusion was evident on her face. “How did you-”

The question was never finished for an explosion rocked the warehouse. Oliver turned to see laser sightings fly around the dark room. They quickly converged on them. He tackled Felicity to the ground and behind cover as they opened fire.

She cried out for the impact but quickly got over the shock when she realized there were bullets flying over her head. She huddled up as best she could with bound arms and legs. He was going to have to do something about those if he wanted her to survive this, and he needed more answers from her.

“Listen to me,” he commanded to get her attention. “I’m going to free you. Don’t run away. These men will kill you without a second thought.”

Felicity looked at him. Tears were starting to form in her eyes again. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. And I’m not the one shooting at you at the moment.”

She stared at him for a moment before nodding. He snapped the chair’s legs off and helped her free herself from the zip ties.

“Thanks,” she said.

One of his eyebrows arched. He had never been thanked for freeing someone from the binds he put there.

Oliver struggled to respond, only getting out a “’elcome” before turning his attention back to the problem. He peeked over the cover to get a lay of the battlefield.

“Who are these guys?” she whispered.

“The less you know the better,” he told her. “Just know that they’re bad and will shoot you if they get the chance. Don’t give them the chance.”

He dropped back behind cover to look at her. “They are starting to surround us. We need to get back to my car. They have the door covered, but we can go through that window,” he said as he pointed over his shoulder. “Stay low and follow me.”

Oliver picked up a piece of debris and threw it in the opposite direction he was planning. It clanked off metal machinery, and the laser sights followed the sound. That’s when he made his move toward the window. Felicity followed as instructed, doing surprisingly well at keeping quiet.

Once they made it, he peered through the window and swore. Now he knew what that explosion was.

“What?” Felicity asked. “What’s wrong?”

“They blew up my car.” The hard drive was still in there. Or used to be in there. Now it was probably in a million pieces scattered throughout the parking lot.

She paled. “I’m dead.”

“Not yet,” he told her. “This warehouse borders the river. There should be small scuba tanks hidden underwater.” He searched for a window that led to the river. “It should be under that window.”

“Why would there be scuba stuff there? And how do you know all this?”

“I can’t answer that. I just need you to trust me.”

“Trust you? Trust you?!” she hissed. “How am I supposed to trust you? You had me tied to a chair, pointed a gun at my face, and interrogated me. You snuck into my apartment. You drugged me!”

“I needed to make sure you weren’t…” He trailed off.

“I wasn’t what?” she demanded.

He sighed. “I had to make sure you weren’t a spy. Listen. We can’t stay here. We need to go.”

Oliver reached for her arm, but she slapped his hand away.

“Felicity, we don’t have time for this.”

Her eyebrows knitted, and she looked at him for a long moment. “Your name,” she said.

“What?”

“Tell me your name, or I’m taking my chances with the other guys.”

He huffed. This was a huge breach in protocol. The rule of protecting your anonymity was drilled into his head during his stay on the island and beaten into him during the training after. But he didn’t have time to deal with the blonde’s stubbornness any more.

He pulled back the hood. “You know who I am.”

Her eyes widened. “Mr. Merlyn? I knew it! Well I never would’ve guessed all of this, but I knew there was something you were hiding.”

“Great. Ready to go now?”

Felicity nodded. Oliver took another peek over the cover only to discover the intruders were no longer following his distraction and starting to surround them again.

“We’ll need to make a run for it.”

“What?!” She shook her head. “No, no, no.”

“We won’t make it any other way,” he whispered. He stilled her head by cupping her cheeks in his hand, forcing her to look at him. “I’ll protect you.”

She looked away. “I can’t do that. They will-”

“Felicity, don’t worry about them,” Oliver interrupted. “I just need you to run as fast as you can to the window and jump through. Don’t stop for anything. I’ll handle the rest.”

Her eyes rose to meet his. He never realized how blue they were until that moment. They were different than Sara’s but just as startlingly beautiful.

She nodded as much as she could while his hands were still cradling her face. The motion broke him from his thoughts.

Oliver let go. “When I tell you, run straight for the window and jump through when you get there. Just focus on the window. Can you do that?”

Felicity gulped. “Yea, sure. Like my daily workouts. Except with bullets and bad guys and glass and a probably very cold river at the end if we make it.”

“We’ll make,” he told her. “Don’t forget to take a deep breath before you jump though. We won’t be coming up for air for a while.”

He looked over their cover and waited until the closest attacker turned away from their direction.

“Go!”

Felicity took off, moving surprisingly fast. Oliver was on her heels a second later. As they ran, he shot at whoever he could see, forcing them to stay behind cover. One of the gunman stepped out into their path, but Felicity never stopped. Oliver put two in his chest as they kept moving.

As they closed in on the window, he surged forward. He wasn’t about to let her go through the glass first. He was trained for such daring escapes, and, if she was a civilian as he believed, she could really hurt herself by doing it wrong. Oliver put as many rounds through the glass as he could before he crashed through.

The sounds of gunfire and his own breathing gave way to rushing air as he fell. Oliver looked down to see the water rushing toward him. He crossed his arms over his chest and brought his feet together just before the water wrapped around him and silenced all noise.

 


	4. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's finally out of the frying pan. But would she choose the fire?

Felicity broke through the surface of the river and gasped for air. She wiped the water from her face and made for the bank once she spotted it. Unfortunately, the edge of the water met a three foot vertical concrete slab topped with another three feet of metal railing. She didn’t have the strength to pull herself up either. She was exhausted. Her nights didn’t usually call for running from men with guns, jumping out windows, or moving up a river underwater. They were lucky to find that underwater motor to help them move because she wouldn’t have made it far on her own.

She felt the ripples through the water as Mr. Merlyn joined her on the wall. His breathing was faster than normal, but it was controlled unlike hers. During their journey, she found out that, not only did she talk too much, she apparently also breathed too much. Felicity drained her small air tank and started to freak out at the possibility of suffocating only to have her captor-turned-savior give her his. There was still a quarter of it left. Then he was able to hold his breath for a long time before finally stopping the motor and pointing to the surface. She had been more than happy to oblige.

“Come on. Let’s get you up there,” he told her.

She was struggling just to keep her head above the water. There was no way she would be able to do what he was asking.

“I can’t,” she breathed.

“Yes, you can, Felicity. I’ll help you.”

She felt one of his hands on the back of her knee, and the other cupped the arch of her foot. He forced her upward enough that she could get a firm grip on the metal bars. She pulled as hard as she could and was able to get her knee onto the concrete. She struggled to roll over the railing and collapsed on the other side.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Merlyn pulling himself over railing with ease. His eyes scanned the area around them as he crept closer to her.

“I think we’re clear. I’m not seeing anyone. Are you okay?”

Felicity laughed at the absurdity of the question. “Oh, I’m not okay. I’m about as far away from okay as I could possibly be. Think about the exact opposite of okay, and that’s where I am right now.”

“But you’re not hurt.”

She sat up, choosing to ignore the question. She looked around, trying to find anything that seemed familiar. Surprisingly, everything did. This was the park she went to for her runs on nice days. Her apartment was only three blocks from here.

She stood, and he rose with her.

“I’m going home,” Felicity told him as she started to walk away.

He grabbed her arm. “No, you’re not.”

She ripped it away from him. “Yes, I am. I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, had a gun pointed at my face, interrogated, shot at, and forced to jump through a window and ride a – a – a scooter underwater as I escaped men trying to kill me. I’m done for the night.”

“I can’t let you go. Those men might come after you again. You need pro-”

“I’ll tell you what I need,” she interrupted. “I need to go home, take a hot shower, and sleep for the next seventy two hours.” She stepped close to his towering frame and stabbed his chest with her finger. “And if I get so much as a whiff of you following me or trying to kidnap me again, I will make sure everyone in the CIA, FBI, NSA, and all those other letters know exactly who you are, what you look like, and where you are. I’ll make sure you have a new Facebook profile, Twitter account, and even a Tumblr spilling all your dirty little secrets. I was able to get through your encrypted hard drive. Imagine what I can do once I hack into secured databases.” She stabbed him with her finger again. “Don’t test me.”

She turned on her heel and walked away. She didn’t look back and was relieved when she didn’t feel his hand on her arm again. She guessed she was really good at threatening people.

Felicity was learning a lot about herself today.

She found her apartment locked, and her keys were still inside. She could go to Mrs. Bartowski, the kind, elderly woman she left her spare key with, but Felicity really didn’t want to wake her up in the middle of the night and have to explain why she was drenched, without shoes, and had a million little scratches from the window she jumped through.

Did she mention she was only wearing socks this entire time? Because that really made sneaking around the warehouse and the trek home fun.

Then she remembered the open window she didn’t remember opening, figuring that’s how her uninvited guest got in. She left the building and checked to find it closed but still unlocked. She crawled through, being sure to lock it behind her.

She headed to the bathroom, peeled off her wet, cold clothes, and got in the shower. The hot water warmed her cool skin. Felicity would have enjoyed it more if it wasn’t for the tiny cuts she got from the shattering glass stinging constantly under the spray.

She reluctantly turned off the shower and dried herself, not really caring if she was still wet as she pulled over an oversized tee shirt. She plopped face first onto her bed and passed out.

* * *

Her alarm blared way too early. She struggled to slap it quiet, only able to do so when she lifted her head from the comfortable confines of the pillow.

The clock said eight, the time she usually gets up to start getting ready for the early shift at Tech World. She contemplated calling in again because what little sleep she had gotten wasn’t nearly enough to ready herself for having to deal with grumpy customers that simply didn’t know how to use their devices nine times out of ten. But calling off two days of work in a row would send all kinds of warning flares to Daily and the others. Then questions would be asked. And she would have to lie to them. And then they would call her out on the lies because she was a horrible, horrible liar. Then she would tell the truth, and, even though most wouldn’t believe it, Daily would because she’s like that, and she would demand that they try to figure out who Mr. Oliver Merlyn was, and that could only end with them in little black boxes in misery. Felicity couldn’t allow that.

So she got up, got dressed, did the best she could with her hair (which meant pulling it back into its usual ponytail), and took her Mini Cooper to work.

Daily was waiting when she got there and started berating her with questions about where she was yesterday, and why she didn’t call her, and was it food poisoning because she was sure it would food poisoning, and should she go see a doctor, and why wasn’t she home when she came by last night to check up on her.

Felicity did her best to deflect and assure her best friend that she was okay and going to survive, and that she didn’t need to see a doctor, and sorry she didn’t answer the door because she was sleeping. At least the last one wasn’t a lie. It just happened to be a drug-induced sleep.

Daily appeared satisfied with the answers she was given, and the day progressed like any other. It was odd that so much happened last night that fundamentally shook her world, yet, less than eight hours later, everything was back to normal.

She decided not to dwell on it, choosing instead to take comfort in the familiar. She should have known it wouldn’t last when Daily bumped her arm with her elbow.

“Hey,” she whispered. “Look who’s back.”

Felicity turned, and her heart fell. There, standing at the door, was Mr. Merlyn, there to wreck her day yet again.

“I’ll be right back,” she said as sweetly as she could before stomping toward the man.

He saw her approach and met her halfway, but she didn’t stop. Felicity grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip, letting him know she wasn’t playing, and dragged him out the store.

“I thought I told you to leave me alone,” she said when she got him far enough away from the entrance to keep from being overheard.

He ignored her. “Can I have my arm back?” he asked.

She looked down to see her hand still wrapped around his forearm. She let go before saying, “What are you doing here, Mr. Merlyn.”

He smiled brilliantly. Why he did so in the face of her anger, she didn’t know. Maybe he wanted to play this conversation as a friendly meeting for anyone who may be watching. If that was the case, it didn’t matter to her. She wasn’t willing to play his game.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I went to your apartment, but you weren’t there.”

“Yeah. I can’t miss two days of work in a row. That would look suspicious coming from me.”

“Which is why I tried here next.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ll ask again. Why are you here? And the real reason. Not some fake excuse about checking up on me.”

He sighed, the façade falling. “I need to ask you more questions about Sara.”

“Nope. No more questions.”

“Fel-”

Her hands cut through the air. “Nuh uh. I’m not going to be tied to a chair again while you demand answers from me.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you. Again,” he added when he noticed her skeptical look. “I just need to know what you know about her. I need to find her. That hard drive I gave you to fix was the best lead I had, but mine was in my car when it exploded and you wiped the other one. So, you’re the only lead I have left.”

“I didn’t wipe the hard drive,” she said absently, covering her mouth when she realized her mistake.

Mr. Merlyn’s eyes hardened. “You didn’t wipe the hard drive?”

He looked away for a moment, probably deciding what to do. Finally, he turned back to her.

“Give it to me,” he demanded.

“So you can shoot me once you have it? I don’t think so.”

“I wouldn’t do that. You have no idea how much danger you’re putting yourself in by having that drive.”

“If last night was any indicator, I’m pretty sure I do. Besides, you couldn’t get to the data anyway.”

He growled, “What did you do?”

“I change the encryption algorithm. Made it better. No one can get into it except me without months of hacking by the best. By the way you couldn’t even extract the data from the broken laptop you gave me, I bet it would take you at least ten lifetimes if you could do it at all.”

“I could lock you in a dark hole for this.”

The thought scared Felicity, but she was in too deep to back down now. “Go ahead. Then you’ll never see what’s in that drive again.”

She saw his jaw tense and his brow furrow. He was pissed.

“Fine,” he nearly spat out. “What do you want?”

“First, I want my life to not be disrupted-”

“Easy. Just give me the drive and the key, and you’ll never see me again.”

She held up a finger. “Wait! I want my life to be disrupted as little as possible. Second, I want in.”

She saw a flash of surprise on his face before it returned to anger. “What do you mean ‘you want in’?”

“I want in. I want to help you do whatever it is you do. I’ll give you the drive. God knows I’ll feel safer when it’s out of my apartment, but I won’t give you the key. You’ll have to come to me if you want to access it.

“And I’m a nosey person. I’ll want to know the who and the what and the why concerning the information I give you. And I’ll use that to help you any way I can. I can only imagine how remarkably helpful it would be to you to have someone on your team that knows her way around networks and the internet.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Why do you want to help me?”

Honestly, Felicity didn’t know. She changed the encryption to protect herself by making her valuable. She hadn’t intended to offer her services in other capacities. Maybe she was bored working at Tech World. It wasn’t exactly the most stimulating of jobs. Maybe last night, as crazy as it was, showed her the tension that was missing from her life. That’s not saying she wanted every night end with her running away from bullets, but excitement part of it she enjoyed. Or maybe it was just because she was tired of wasting her talents.

“Because you need my help,” Felicity ended up saying. “You may be fancy with a gun and the physical aspect of your work, but a lot of the information you’ll be needing is on computers. And I honestly don’t think you know the difference between RAM and ROM, Mr. Merlyn.”

There was another long moment of silence between the two.

“Deal,” he told her finally. “And call me Oliver. I get the feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Of course, that’ll mean we need a cover. I can’t be coming in with a broken electronic every time I need to see you.”

She hadn’t thought about that. Him coming to see her would appear suspicious after the first few times. They needed a better reason for the visits.

As she thought about the problem, her eye caught Daily spectacularly failing at being sneaky as she peeked at them through the window. Felicity sighed as the idea came to mind.

She looked back up at Mr. Mer – Oliver. He was looking at the sky, searching for a reason they would be together all the time. She grabbed his face and pulled it down to look at her. He looked surprised as she raised herself to her toes and kissed him.

His shock didn’t last long. His hands quickly found her waist and he bent down so Felicity didn’t have to reach so far. The kiss lasted another few seconds before their lips pulled away while their hands remained.

Oliver smirked at her. “Did you just want to kiss me, or is this our cover?”

“Don’t get all cocky,” she told him as she played with the scruff of his beard (she needed to keep up appearances for the audience, right?). “Daily has been getting on me about dating again. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.”

“Well, I’m glad I could help.”

Her hands fell from his face to his chest where she felt hard muscle. She gently pushed him away. “I need to get back to work before Tom gets on me. Come by my place after, and we can discuss the rest of this.”

“See you then,” he said as he strolled away.

As she walked back to Tech World, Felicity couldn’t stop her fingers from rising and brushing her lips. There was a lingering, tingly sensation that remained on them after they parted. So, maybe this whole cover wouldn’t be as bad of an idea as she feared.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I planned chapters 3 and 4 to be one chapter, but that would have been huge. So I separated them and now this thing has four chapters. Anyway, that's how it begins. My muse has already cooked up some other scenarios for this little 'verse, so I'll be revisiting it from time to time.
> 
> Thanks for all the support. It's been really fun reading your comments and getting kudos. I'm glad you're enjoying reading this as much as I enjoy writing it.


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